


One Last Truce

by tomato_greens



Series: Listen, Listen - music ficlets [22]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-03
Updated: 2012-11-03
Packaged: 2017-11-17 16:50:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles hates Christmas for the reasons that people usually do: the hideous capitalist nightmare of a fat man furtively offering candy and gifts to strange children, the way the fake scent of pine people spray everywhere makes him sneeze, the fact that his mom should be there and isn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Last Truce

**Author's Note:**

> For [sparrowwingsandfragilethings](http://sparrowwingsandfragilethings.tumblr.com) on [tumblr](http://tomato-greens.tumblr.com/post/34924248588/fic-one-last-truce). Written to [The Heartache Can Wait](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4l-YvO_blE) by Brandi Carlile.

Stiles hates Christmas for the reasons that people usually do: the hideous capitalist nightmare of a fat man furtively offering candy and gifts to strange children, the way the fake scent of pine people spray everywhere makes him sneeze, the fact that his mom should be there and isn’t. It’s not that his dad doesn’t try, but they’re both missing her and neither of them can talk about it, so the air is full of the kind of painful, stifling silence even Stiles doesn’t know how to combat. Even now, twelve years later, it’s hard to be alone with his dad when the only thing between them is the sour taste of mourning and the tiny fake tree they’ve put up every year since his mom got sick. Christmas had always been her holiday. 

Derek also hates Christmas, which is one reason he and Stiles get along so well––no one else wants to talk to them because they’re snappish and miserable for the entire month of December. When Stiles was still in high school and the Pack hadn’t yet been secure, he and Derek mostly sat sullenly in Derek’s burnt-out house in their winter coats, Stiles crunching on store-bought popcorn balls like the bones of his enemies and Derek just glaring at the floor. Peter would occasionally walk into the room and _tsk tsk_ over them, but whatever, he had no room to talk––Stiles knows for a fact that he spent the first few Christmases post-resurrection crying over reruns of _Grey’s Anatomy_.

After Stiles comes back to Beacon Hills with an extremely useless English degree, he starts fucking Derek because he doesn’t know what else to do and he needs a distraction before he heads out to grad school to get another extremely useless degree. He’s not Lydia–-he’s not going to save the world or visit new dimensions or win any prizes for being the brightest crayon in the box. But research has always kind of been his thing, and it turns out people are willing to give him money for it.

Somehow, when it comes time to move across the country to, like, pursue his dreams or whatever, Derek comes with him.

“You can’t do this,” Stiles shrieks unbecomingly when Derek suggests it, gesturing wildly behind him––at Derek’s house, at the woods, at Beacon Hills, at the _Pack_ , at everything Derek has ever said he wanted.

“I’m the alpha,” Derek growls, baring his teeth. It had been frightening, once.

“That’s exactly my point,” Stiles protests, but then they’re kissing, and before he knows it Derek has set up some kind weekly telecommuting plan with Erica and Boyd.

Peter pats him on the back and says, “Welcome to the twenty-first century,” then gives him an ethernet cable with sarcastic aplomb while Stiles scowls and promises himself that wherever they end up, it will be somewhere with WiFi.

How the fuck the whole three-thousand-miles-away problem is going to work with pack dynamics and the whole giant _territory_ thing is what Stiles wants to know, but Derek just shrugs. “Look, we have traditional territories, but it’s not unknown for young packs to move around or separate sometimes. I’ll set something up with the Adita clan, they knew Laura and me––then––they won’t mind as long as I’m not trying to muscle them out. And wolves migrate for hundreds and hundreds of miles in the wild.”

“You’re always reminding me you’re not actually a canid,” Stiles says, running a hand through the soft hair at the nape of Derek’s neck without conscious thought.

“Maybe I want to embrace my inner wolf,” Derek says, eyes flashing, and Stiles can’t help but laugh.

So they’re in New York for Christmas this year. They went back to California for Thanksgiving, but even though they could probably swing the flight fare for Christmas, too––Derek made serious bank when his whole family was brutally murdered, but neither of them is comfortable dipping into that particular well––they decide to weather it out in East Coast style.

“I’ve never had a real white Christmas,” Stiles explains, tucking a coffee into Derek’s hand and kissing his nose because he can’t help himself and sometimes he can get the tips of Derek’s ears to turn red. They’re decorating the dive of an apartment the Adita clan found them, if by decorating you mean _hanging up dollar store plastic mistletoe and shitty tinsel one of them rescued from the dumpster_ , which is exactly what Stiles means. 

“I don’t think it’s so likely you’ll get one here, either,” Derek says, and Stiles remembers that Derek had spent at least a couple years here, working on his GED and tending bar while Laura searched for a way to get back home––he doesn’t know much but the details Derek will whisper when he wakes up from a nightmare or when he knows Stiles is most of the way asleep, and those details he hoards, categorizes, treasures. “A gray Christmas, maybe. A dirty Christmas.”

“Shut up and let me live the dream,” says Stiles, and hands him a popcorn ball. 

There’s a department holiday party that Stiles drags Derek to, because even though they haven’t named the thing between them sometimes they whisper _I love you_ in the dead of night, and when you love someone, Derek, you accompany them to their shitty department holiday parties and help them network and maybe hold their hair back if they get really drunk, yes, even if the hair is buzzed. It’s held in a room adjacent to the writing center, a sad and wilting menorah, with its three candle-shaped lightbulbs, keeping company with the even sadder skeletal evergreen on a rickety corner table. 

“Hi, this is Derek,” is all Stiles knows to say, but it’s not really that awkward. They don’t hold hands or whisper sweet nothings to each other in front of anyone because, thank God, Stiles learned that lesson long ago with Scott and Allison, and in any case he doesn’t want Derek to have a stroke from too much emotion or anything. Neither of them gets drunk, although nearly everyone else seems to.

“What do you study?” asks Charlie, a really obnoxious comp lit graduate student who says he has a girlfriend in Canada and who pretends to know anything at all about postcolonialism and intersectionality. He regularly makes Stiles want to claw his own eyes out. 

“Wolf pack dynamics,” says Derek, grinning and dangerous. “Territorial practices.” 

Charlie says, “Oh, science,” and shudders away. Stiles, reckless, slings an arm around Derek’s waist.

“You’re the alpha,” he whispers happily, squeezing.

“Sure,” says Derek, and, later, where no one can see, kisses him under the mistletoe.


End file.
